Cry Havoc My Mighty Monkey!

I look at how much time I have and how much effort I can put forth to the things I love and think I will set this one aside. It was neat when I was working on it but the brain babies that come out of a fecund imagination should sometimes be let loose into the wild. I will pass along this model and base.

In thinking about the back and forth of doing work with paint and sculpting I’m finding that the balance is pretty good. I the same manner as drawing you can’t get too caught up in the details without going to hell in a handbasket. I guess you can create caricatures but chibi figs aren’t my style (for the moment of trying) and I think there are detail levels best worked out to certain aesthetics.

Here I’m setting up some broken layering for what will be cobblestone flooring underneath Furious George and marking off some areas that might benefit visually from some toppled wall. The 90×120 oval is going to be packed with terrain character to match what I hope be just as interesting a figure. The Greenstuff World rollers I’ve collected will be very useful here. Carved foam low wall remains could be the way for me to go. I have no idea just yet but it’ll come with time.

Ok… I couldn’t keep my hands off my bad (not so) little monkey. The gaps are filled and now await more building once my Orktober project is fiished.

Lots of work done with putting this together using quickset epoxy. The rear leg and left arm weren’t problems. The upraised right arm was a pain to angle properly and keep that way. I misjudged the time needed for the epoxy to set and almost ended up losing the arm when it slowly fell lower and almost completely off. I managed to reset it and saved the whole thing. I don’t trust the stuff to be set yet and have it sitting at an angle where I want it in the meantime. I also am glad that I got the 90x120mm oval from Greenstuffworld after seeing the 80mm round base that another modeler had used. This thing will not be moving around o the tabletop without a little lifting power. It might also need magnets to make sure when this shifts it doesn’t destroy anything in transit when stored.

I’ll put this aside to make way for my Orktober project.

The parcel has arrived with my nearly half kilo figure (~453g). Its great to have the heft of this thing in hand and I will be putting it together with significant pins. I have brass rod on hand that just needs to be cut and I have pulled out my Dremel rotary tool for the task of setting them. I’ve also gotten some quick set epoxy to adhere parts with, what I hope, is enough strength to withstand upcoming moving. I know it’ll be short work with the bits but the base dressing with some cobbles and stone wall will take a little bit more time. I also will drop some vegetation in the same manner as my display Amazon. The assembly will be as far as I take this for the short term as Orktober is nearly upon us and I need to put some fun out for greenskin love.

Looking over the progression of miniature work with a jungle theme I’ve just been going bigger and bigger. Its been a long standing idea in my head to go ahead and use Kabaka K’wana from Reaper miniatures (03052) as a way to create and play about from an original transfer sheet for a Magic the Gathering card Gorilla War Cry that I purchased from the artist at a comic convention long long ago.

I’ve seen the price for the figure rise with the cost of tin on the global market triple and the prices for this figure went well beyond what I wanted to pay. When Reaper dropped prices for production with their P-65 release I thought that it might be time to buy. Feeling exactly how weighty the figures were of this material I thought better of it and set it on the back burner. Now in the age of Reaper Bones I held out hope but, sadly, have yet to see any material success of having one big badass ape on the tabletop in such an impressive stance.

I’ve delved back into the Internet to try and find other who’ve messed around with this figure and have managed to get a few hits with some other hobbyists pages (those perhaps not yet Cult of Games members) and an old announcement of someone selling off their copy on eBay. Links to give some traffic to others that might well enjoy the increase in traffic.

Geek Rampage – Christian Conkle hobby blog – good heads up that the figure will have significant gaps (aside from the reaper site photo)

Eclectic Gentleman Tabletop Gamer – good info for scale of the base that I’ll need and quality shots of the finished model

Worthpoint eBay sale – interesting for the modified pose of the right arm

Searching the likes of Thingiverse and Shapeways has yielded no love for great gaming apes as I can only seem to get 40K Silverbacks. Are those actually a chapter? *shrug* No matter. The whimsical world of the Internet can provide abundance or scant little.

From this I look to the history of videogames and recall Primal Rage with its chief characters of Chaos and Blizzard. I remember Chaos primarily as he’s been the only character in a fighting game that I’ve seen openly vomit or urinate on his opponent. Ahh, the good old days when Mortal Kombat’s Fatality moves were so scandalous that they prompted discussions and debate about the morality of gaming. Nostalgia aside I think that there might be merit in Chaos as inspiration for brutal humor of some sort in the future with another project.